THE WORLD TREND

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 108, 3 November 1937, Page 10

THE WORLD TREND

LESS SELF-RELIANCE

TOWARDS DICTATORSHIP

(Special to the "Evening Post.")

TIMARU, This Day.

. Everywhere today, said Mr. M. G. C. McCaul (Wellington), in his presidential address to the annual conference of the Associated Chambers of Commerce, the trend was for democracies to lose their essential strength and selfreliance and to move towards that state of affairs which led to dictatorships. "In many democratic countries today we find Governments maintaining the outer shell of democratic rule, in the election by the people of their rulers," he said, "but in conducting the actual governance of the country they veer more and more towards the adoption of the principles of autocracy. The result of this policy will, I think, be the gradual increase of the power of the State and a corresponding weakening of the power of the people. In course of time government will accept more and more responsibility for the welfare of the people, department after department will be created and staffed until all the chief activities of the nation are organised and supervised by civil servants acting on instructions from the head of the Government. "Concurrently with this development of social services, all inaugurated with the best intentions, the people will become accustomed to lean more and more on government, and less and less upon their own efforts. It then will be but a short step to a dictatorship. Indeed, the people will have become so enervated and lacking in ability to think and act for themselves that the time must inevitably come when a dictatorship will be necessary to avoid utter confusionHOLD FAST TO PRINCIPLES. "A sound philosophy is more important than right action because philosophy pertains to that which is everlasting, whereas action pertains to the ephemeral. On the surface, change and decay appear to be continuous. We must, however, not overlook the fact that the principles which govern all are changing and unchangeable, therefore if we hold fast to principles that have stood throughout' the ages they will serve us as they served our fathers and grandfathers.

"We come of a race of free men. Other nations write of liberty; our forefathers won it and gave it to the world. Let us not exchange the freedom that our ancestors wrested from tyrant princes in times past for a mess of pseudo-democratic pottage cooked by a beneficent bureaucracy. May we ever remember the traditions of our race. It is only by looking back over the path we have come that we can see most clearly the path we should follow. Traditions are like the helm of a ship. They are behind us, but they exert an inexorable influence upon the course we pursue."